Richard York won the 2007 Outstanding Publication Award of the Environment and Technology Section of the American Sociological Association.  The committee based the award on a series of three articles by York and graduate student Brett Clark, both at the University of Oregon, published from 2005 and 2006 in which, according to the citation, they “present new and theoretically rich frameworks for how environmental sociology (and sociology more generally) might address critical issues such as global climate change and the loss of biodiversity. The work is original, interdisciplinary, and of the highest quality.” 

York and fellow STIRPAT principal Eugene Rosa are the only repeat recipients of the award.  Both, along with Thomas Dietz the third STIRPAT principal,  received the award for STIRPAT publications between  2002 and 2004  Rosa also received the   2000-2002 awardfor his co-authored book Risk, Uncertainty and Rational Action.  

The papers are:

Brett Clark and Richard York. 2005. "Dialectical Materialism and Nature: An Alternative to Economism and Deep Ecology." Organization & Environment 18:318-337.

Brett Clark and Richard York. 2005. "Carbon metabolism: Global capitalism, climate change, and the biospheric rift." Theory and Society 34:391-428.

Richard York and Brett Clark. 2006. "Marxism, Positivism and Scientific Sociology: Social Gravity and Historicity." The Sociological Quarterly 47:425-450.